Pet Peaves

If you’ve ever worked with a graphic designer, you’ve probably noticed they have some strange pet peeves or annoyances. Last week we had a TV sales person in our office. While on the topic of design she mentioned a previous graphic designer / co-worker of hers had something against the font Comic Sans. Jokingly, she asked me if I knew why or what the deal was. Laughing I shook my head yes and sided with her co-worker. She was baffled. Maybe I can shed some light on why graphic designers might seem so quirky or picky about things.

The following are some of my personal pet peeves. They may vary depending on the designer, but most I’m sure share some, if not all, of these.

Pet Peeve #1 ~ Comic Sans
It’s fun. It’s groovy. It’s fits any occasion. Right??? WRONG! Comic Sans is highly overused and does not belong on most publications. Save the Comic Sans for your daughter’s birthday invitation if you absolutely feel the need to use it. Many designers are taught in school to avoid using fonts like Comic Sans. We’re taught that everything in design communicates a message, event font styles. Comic Sans communicates fun. period.

Pet Peeve #2 ~ Center Alignment
Oh please… do not center align everything in your flyer. An imporant element of design is alignment. Some center alignment can be good, for example on headings. However, when you center align everything in a document it makes it difficult for the readers eye to follow the text. Their eye is constantly figuring out where lines end and begin.

Pet Peeve #3 ~ Stretched Pictures
Pictures have specific aspect ratios and when you don’t keep to the pictures ratio you end up with a screwed picture. Faces become elongated…trees may become fatter… but most importantly… pixels become “pixelated” which means a blurry image.

Pet Peeve #4 ~ Large Type Settings
You want your flyer to get attention? Use a large point heading. Do NOT put all your text in a large point size. If you do you are essentially drowning out your point.

Pet Peeve #5 ~ Web Sites That Don’t Work
Primarily my job is a web designer. As such, I see a lot of web sites – good and bad. It’s one thing to have a web site that doesn’t look good, but by the 2nd click on a web site link that doesn’t work I hit the Red X – Close. It’s a useless site that is wasting my time. What is even worse is that I have seen companies actively promoting a poor working web site like it is agreat resource. Have they even tried using their site? I can more easily accept a poorly designed web site than I can a disfunctional one.